"Progressive Indexation". President Bush is moving toward compromise on Social Security reform, toward means-testing of sorts and raising taxes on the rich (both of which I have long advocated) as the combined cure for the Nation's retirement system.

Under the proposal, the first embraced by Bush, benefits to low-income people would remain tied to wages and stay the same. Future benefits for wealthier people would be limited by tying growth in benefits to prices rather than wages.

The benefits of middle earners would be based on a combination of wage and price indexing, and since wages grow more quickly than prices, critics say they would see their benefits curtailed.

The White House said this "progressive indexation" approach -- first proposed by a Democratic expert Robert Pozen -- would close the long-term deficit of Social Security by more than 70 percent.

White House officials said Bush was open to a variety of options -- from raising the cap on Social Security taxes paid by high-income earners to upping the retirement age -- to bridge the remaining 30 percent gap.

Alas, what Bush proposes is still highly unjust. He would continue to permit the super-rich to receive Social Security! Moreover, I have heard nothing but talk about raising the cap on the income that is subject to FICA taxation, not removing it entirely so that the rich and super-rich will have to pay FICA on every dollar they earn, just as the poor and middle-class pay FICA on every dollar they earn.
+
I suspect, tho I have not yet seen any estimate from economists, that simply requiring everyone to pay FICA on every dollar they earn would permanently solve the Social Security funding problem.
+
Plainly if merely indexing benefits differently without raising the cap would close 70% of the gap, eliminating the earnings cap entirely should not just eliminate the remaining 30% but indeed leave us rolling in dough! — as could either produce a lowering of the FICA tax rate for everyone now paying it or help pay down the national debt. By contrast, the proposal to divert part of payroll taxes to private accounts would starkly increase the national debt.
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Moreover, the rich and super-rich don't need government payouts, so shouldn't receive any. The name of the program is "Social Security", not "welfare for the rich". They who are already secure should not be snorting at the public trough, and should be ashamed of themselves for even suggesting they have the right to take away some of the benefits of the poor and lower middle class so they can receive money they don't need. If we completely eliminate from Social Security rolls people who, without Social Security, have income of $35,000 a year or more (the specific cap being open to discussion), they shouldn't receive a dime from Social Security. And even then, what they receive should be only enuf to bring them up to that cap, not over it.
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In short, Bush is moving in the right direction, but has much to improve. He should read my discussion of the issues of human justice in Social Security reform, as set forth in the entry to this blog of March 17, and then adopt everything I propose. That would fix everything.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,574.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:08 PM

 
A Private Right of Crime. Rush Limbaugh, talk-radio darling of the Radical Right, tried to get away with "doctor shopping" for painkillers not by proving that he didn't do it, but by asserting that his medical records are private. Never mind that the only way prosecutors could find out for sure if Rush had violated the law is by looking at his medical records. Limbaugh claims that government has no right to look at records that could convict him, because they're private! In effect, his criminal behavior is to be shielded by his right of privacy.
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The Supreme Court of Florida — they're in the news a lot nowadays, aren't they? — didn't buy it. Limbaugh's listeners apparently did, since he's still on the air.
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Now the case can proceed on the merits.
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Why aren't rightwingers indignant about a drug addict's asserting a private right of crime? If Jane Fonda or Ted Kennedy tried to dodge the law by asserting their behavior cannot be investigated because their records are private, the Right would have a field day, whooping with Righteous indignation. But when one of their own asserts a private right of crime, they say nothing.
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Martha Stewart was sent to prison not for what she did but for trying to hide what she did. She was not a political person asserting supposedly principled stands and telling the world what to think and do. Rush Limbaugh should be held not to a lesser standard but to a higher standard.
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It may be all very Christian to forgive his 'weakness' in this 'very personal matter', but I don't see the same forgiveness for heroin or crack addicts in the ghetto. Shouldn't one size fit all in morality? Or are we to have two moralities, one for the Right, and one for everybody else?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,574.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:06 PM

 
Mexican Statehood. I sent the following letter to the New York Post today:

THO one can readily agree that "No foreign policy development would be better for the 21st-century United States than a prosperous, rule-of-law Mexico", Ralph Peters is unwise in staking all bets on one man, Mexico City mayor Lopez Obrador. We don't know what secrets he may have, and many Latin American knights in shining armor have turned out to have black hearts. The most famous is one Fidel Castro.
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The only way to ensure Mexican prosperity and the rule of law is to admit Mexico to the Union as several states, perhaps 10. Had the All-Mexico Movement after the Mexican War succeeded, Mexico would long ago have become a prosperous region of the United States, adding immeasurably to our wealth and power. Instead, we took only the relatively unpopulated north of the country, and threw the rest back. Now we're all paying for that racist mistake in judgment. It's time to invite Mexico into the Union. Our futures are inextricable. Erase the border.

(Responsive to "A Dirty Frame", column by Ralph Peters in the New York Post, April 27, 2005)
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,574.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 10:57 AM

 
Bush a Faggot? Television news reports yesterday showed the President of the United States kissing a man on both cheeks and then walking hand-in-hand with him! I was shocked!
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The man Bush was making lovey-dovey with is Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, whom Bush was trying to get to increase oil output to bring down the cost of gasoline in the United States. How desperately did Bush want that? What did he do in private to influence the Prince? One shudders to think.
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Bush must have startled his anti-gay, redneck constituency with his shocking displays of faggotry. He'd better watch that in the future.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:32 PM

 
Global 'Warming'. The Associated Press today reports that:

An unusual spring storm dumped nearly 2 feet of wet snow on parts of the Midwest and Appalachians, snapping power lines, taking a bite out of baseball and rewriting the record books. * * * The two-day weekend storm brought temperatures as much as 25 degrees below the normal of around 60 as snow fell across parts of Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and western Pennsylvania, and south along the Appalachians as far as western North Carolina.

That same weekend, PBS broadcast the National Geographic Society's documentary/polemic "The One Degree Factor", part of a larger program, "Strange Days on Planet Earth", which decried natural processes, such as competition between earlier plant species and new arrivals!
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That NGS/PBS special backtracked a tad from the extravagant claims that planetary temperatures are rising starkly, since science does not support any such claim, but asserts that a rise of global temperature of only one degree Fahrenheit — not even Celsius, which is almost twice as large, but Fahrenheit — is having powerful, borderline catastrophic effects. What a bunch of bull!
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As yesterday's drop of 25 degrees below normal in large parts of the United States shows dramatically, the natural world has huge fluctuations in temperature, without catastrophic effects upon planetary animal or plant populations. Historically,

A careful examination of the climate record reveals that Europe experienced a prolonged warm period known as the Medieval Warm Period (hereafter referred to as MWP) between the years 600 and 1150, cooling of the climate between the years 1150 and 1460, a brief warming between the years 1460 and 1560, followed by dramatic cooling known as the Little Ice Age (hereafter referred to as LIA) between the years 1560 and 1850.

Figure 5 at that Suffolk County (New York) Community College website shows the variation in average temperatures was probably on the order of 3.5 degrees during the past 1,000 years. There are no actual human records for most of that period, of course. As Figure 1 shows, there weren't meaningful weather records of any kind in most of the world until 1850 and in some places not until 1945! Moreover, as I think TV comic Dennis Miller observed on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno recently, to believe in the reliability of temperature recordings from 100 years ago, you'd have to believe that thermometers today are no more accurate than those 100 years ago, so the entire case for "global warming" may rest upon the flimsy premise that thermometers 100 years ago were as accurate as those today.
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But even if there has been a rise in global temperatures, as an average, that does not mean that all parts of the planet are uniformly warmer. Some places may be warmer, others cooler. An average is a statistical leveling that can be distorted by anomalies. For instance, if you average Bill Gates' income with that of 1,000 ordinary retirees from the lower middle class, you will see that the group as a whole is very rich! That does not, however, mean that the great preponderance of people in that group are rich, or even comfortably above the poverty line.
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Similarly, if you have 3 days in early April that are much warmer than normal, but the rest of the month is a little cooler than normal, the average may be warmer because of those three days. That does not mean that the stress upon wildlife of the remainder of the month, which is colder, is eased.
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We need to remember that the bulk of terrestrial life, especially mammals and plants, is affected adversely much more by cold than by warmth. Mammals need to maintain a certain temperature or they will die. Plants are more active in warmer temperatures than colder, and even the thickest evergreen forest stops photosynthesizing if the temperature falls below about 45 degrees F.
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All the while the planet's temperature may have been wandering up and down by about three and a half degrees Fahrenheit from 900 A.D. to 1740, no human activity had anything to do with it. There were no industrial plants belching millions of tons of "greenhouse gases" to warm the planet; nor were people growing millions of square miles of extra forest to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as might cool things down. The Ice Ages likewise came and went without any human input whatsoever.
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It is arrogant to believe that tiny little people, who are scarcely even found on the great preponderance of this planet's surface — the oceans, deserts, high mountains, ice caps — could have any significant effect whatsoever upon planetary weather.
+
Two feet of snow in the industrial heartland of America more than a month into spring is global warming? What kind of weather will we have if we stop or even reverse global warming? Don't worry about it, because people have no effect upon planetary temperature.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:08 PM

 
Not the Very Worst Choice. (I intended to comment on the College of Cardinals' election of the new Pope the day it happened, but computer problems forbade. I have triumphed over those difficulties, and celebrate with this belated commentary.)
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The selection of Josef Ratzinger, Cardinal of Munich, as the new Pope Benedict XVI, seems, at this juncture, profoundly unwise, verging on abysmally stupid and rash, not conservative. The only way the College of Cardinals could have done worse is to have elected a young Italian of identical views.
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John Paul II was the first non-Italian Pope in 455 years. That could have been a fluke, and Italians were pushing hard for a return of the papacy to Italy. It's not enuf for them that it's called the "Roman" Catholic Church and is headquartered within Italy — tho not technically in Italy, Vatican City being a separate "country". In their (plainly limited) wisdom, the cardinals at least opted not to elect an Italian. Unfortunately, they stayed with a European, a major disappointment, and irritation, to the rest of the world. But in refusing to elect an Italian, they did opt, as some commentators observed, for a pope from "the global church". That is the first good thing about their choice.
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The new Pope is an old fool, but at least he is old. That is the second (and last) good thing about this choice. We can expect him to die soon. Not soon enuf, but soon. Let's hope he doesn't end up fooling everybody and reigning for 30 years!
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Of course, he could fool us all in another way: he could make an about-face from the radical-right views that he expounded under JP II. Perhaps he was just a kiss-ass doing JPII's dirty work when he had no power to set policy himself, so once he does have the power to set the Church's course, he will steer for the future, first hoisting the anchor of the past that he himself set so firmly in the muck of prior error.
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One report I saw on the day the Pope was selected, quoted a German priest who called the choice of the German reactionary Ratzinger a "catastrophe" for the Church. It may well turn out to be so.
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The Church is losing in its competition with Protestant churches in its traditional base, and it may not make up for that loss in numbers – and wealth and power – thru missionary work in the Third World.
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Latin America comprises about half the Catholic world (so should have been given the papacy this time), and Protestant churches are growing fast there, in large part because they allow pastors to marry, so have plenty of people to offer pastoral services to congregants. By unfortunate contrast, the Catholic Church's insistence on the insane rule of celibacy for (some) priests has produced a very steep drop (catastrophic? perhaps) in the number of priests able to minister to their parishioners' temporal needs. Whereas Protestant churches afford practical aid of many kinds (housing, employment, psychological and family counseling, legal assistance, and on, and on) to the members of their flock thru a robust contingent of ministers, the Roman Church has so few priests available that it can't even keep some churches open, despite importunate demand from would-be parishioners. Tho lay advisors might assist in some matters, there are some functions for which only a priest will do.
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Modern Western societies, the fundament of historic Christendom, do not accept Ratzinger's view that all wisdom in all things comes from the most conservative reading of the Bible, and that no matter how many thousands of years go by, the Church must never change its teachings — except, of course, as regards the Jews. Church teachings regarding the role of the Jews in arresting, abusing, and killing Christ have been completely changed in recent decades, in arrant, heretical defiance of the express language of the Gospels.
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Why? Because the last Pope was Polish, and Poland was a major center of Ashkenazi Jewry. Karol Wojtyla (Pope JPII) grew up with bunches of Jews, and his personal friendships from childhood induced him to change the Church's teachings, teachings that had existed for almost 2,000 years! This is what happens when a church's doctrines rest upon the personal history, judgments, and prejudices of a single man (no pun intended) at any given time. In like fashion, Cardinal Ratzinger bears in his personal resume compelled-membership in the Hitler Youth. He is both indignant and embarrassed about that, so may continue the heretical teachings of JPII regarding the Jews, exculpating today's Jews from the sins of early Jewish zealots in killing Jesus and uncounted other early Christians, even tho falsifying that history and neglecting the honor that Islam accords Jesus has produced pro-Zionist and anti-Moslem policies among many Western countries that are entirely at variance with any commonsense reading of Christian, Jewish, and Moslem texts.
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Ancient, baseless bigotries, as against homosexuality, are to be clung to, no matter how society might change and no matter how large a proportion of the public might abandon the Church from distaste for its mistreatment of gay people (including friends, co-workers, and members of their own family). Never mind that Jesus Himself never once condemned homosexuality, nor even mentioned it, which he could easily have done to pander to prejudice in order to make his message more palatable. (Compare Republican posturing on homosexuality to divert public attention from the vicious mistreatment of the poor for the benefit of the rich that their program entails.)
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Sexless, psychological castrati are to be trusted to give wise and helpful advice to normal people, people who appreciate their full, human, sexual nature.
+
Ordinarily, voluntary sexual continence of any significant duration is proof of a severe mental disorder, even psychosis. Yet when such lunacy is undertaken in the name of holiness, we're supposed to think that the deformed personalities who embark upon so mad a devotion are not insane, but are indeed to be listened to about things they know nothing about.
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Shriveled-up old fools who have been miserable all their lives for not being able to enjoy their full, human nature, cannot possibly convey the joy of real human life nor understand in any degree the true nature of sexuality.
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Celibacy is a crime against the priesthood, and a deeply subversive force working powerful harm to the modern church. People who refuse to have sex are deviates, and a Church that rests its future on deviates is a Church in deep trouble.
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What most people don't know is that the Roman Catholic Church actually does permit some priests to marry! There are "uniate" churches, which were once separate but which later reunited with Rome to recognize the Pope as head of the universal church (that's what "catholic" means) — whose priests are allowed to marry! How can any Pope defend the logical absurdity that it's okay for uniate priests to marry, but not for non-uniate priests to marry? Conversely, if it is wrong as a matter of morality or practicality for priests to marry, then the new Pope must forbid all priests of Rome to marry – and thus drive the uniate churches away from Rome again!
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Priestly celibacy is driving millions away from the central Church all around the world. Why not uniates?
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Perhaps it's time for the conference of bishops of major countries all around the world to remind Rome that "the Church" is actually the body of believers worldwide, not the hierarchy in Vatican City, and demand that the out-of-touch, shriveled-up old fools of the Vatican end compelled priestly celibacy, while of course allowing priests who choose not to marry to continue to do that, even tho normal people will regard such a bizarre choice with suspicion — as well they should.
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The U.S. Conference of Bishops and their equivalents in Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, and every other major Catholic country should warn Rome that they will disown the Pope's teachings and break away as fully as the Church of England broke with Rome — and take all Church assets in their countries with them — unless, at the least, the Pope ends compelled priestly celibacy.
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Celibacy is ravaging the Church. One way it has done so is in the multitudinous incidents of priestly sexual abuse. Continence is driving priests crazy, quite literally, and thus impelling them to nonconsensual sex. Celibacy has long been a cover for maladjusted homosexuals to escape questioning as to why they haven't married. So again, in another way, we have a priesthood that cannot relate to the bulk of parishioners, not just because they don't share their sexual orientation, but because they hate and feel shame for sexuality, whereas the bulk of parishioners love their sexuality, and have integrated it into their lives.
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When, despite their best efforts, priests both homosexual and heterosexual can no longer stand the misery and loneliness that the Church, in its madness, has inflicted on them, and act out, they don't always leave the priesthood first, and don't always find fully consenting partners (or partners legally regarded as capable of consent by virtue of age, even if they actually do consent, and indeed enthusiastically embrace sex that lawmakers want them to refuse).
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It's time for the Roman Catholic Church to permit all priests, uniate and non-, to marry. It's time, as well, for the Church to get over its insane condemnation of homosexuality, which finds no support in the very most important thing Jesus taught us, the Golden Rule: As you would have others do to you, so too do to them. (Matthew 7:12) Think about the literal meaning of that commandment for more than two seconds, and you will realize that homosexual men obey it as fully as it can be obeyed.
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If Jesus is God, and He told us, in plain words, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us; and gay men obey that commandment literally, how can homosexuality be wrong? If it's not wrong according to Jesus's own teaching, it cannot be wrong for any Church faithful to His teachings. Amen.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,567.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:56 AM

 
Republican Unreality. John Podhoretz trivializes opposition to John Bolton's nomination on the twin grounds that the charge he is vicious to people he disagrees with is "probably false" and that that charge is in any case a "preposterous objection". That is precisely the kind of out-of-touch foolishness that endangers Republican hegemony.
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Bolton is being considered for AMBASSADOR, not military officer. Viciousness and diplomacy don't go together, especially at the United Nations, where the U.S. is already viewed as a bully, and especially at a time when the U.S. wants to internationalize its Iraq mission and diversify the sources of funding so we don't have to keep pouring tens of billions of dollars into Iraq and Afghanistan when we have a huge budget deficit. John Bolton is the wrong man for the job, and the Republicans are the wrong party for this country.
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(Responsive to "Elephant Panic", column by John Podhoretz in the New York Post, April 22, 2005)
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,566.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:57 PM

 
Declare Bankruptcy Now, and Protest Usury by Cutting Up Your Credit Cards. Congress has passed the hugely oppressive "reform" of the bankruptcy law written by credit-card companies and banks to reduce the people of this country to debt slavery. If you have ever thought of declaring personal bankruptcy, DO IT NOW. The Associated Press reports that you have only six months before the new law will take effect and prevent you from starting over free from debt and from crushing, usurious interest rates.

The 30,000 to 210,000 people the American Bankruptcy Institute estimates will be affected can escape its impact if they file for bankruptcy before then.

Bankruptcy attorneys anticipate a rush to the courthouse.

I cannot believe that so few people would be affected by the lockdown of bankruptcy. BankruptcyAction.com says:

To approximate the number of people filing bankruptcy we must increase the filings [1,563,145, including many joint filings by husband and wife] by 31.9% to get 2,062,000 people who filed bankruptcy in the year ended December 31, 2004.

Before you take steps to declare bankruptcy, read a little on the Internet to know exactly what it involves, which can help you decide if bankruptcy makes sense in your particular circumstances. A Google search for "declaring personal bankruptcy without lawyer" produced a number of useful websites, such as:
http://www.expertlaw.com/library/bankruptcy/filing_bankruptcy.html (a short overview)
http://www.consumer-action.org/English/library/money_mgt/2003_bankruptcy_leader/index.php#Topic_01 (a more thoro overview — but beware: that discussion is the product of an entity created by Capital One, a major (and shady, usurious) credit-card company);
http://www.filing-bankruptcy-form.com/FAQ.html (a discussion of filing without a lawyer);
http://standardlegal.net/bankruptcy/ (a website that offers do-it-yourself software and links to lots of informational sites).
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You may think of other search phrases and use other search engines. But if, after you review all the info you think you need, you decide that bankruptcy under CURRENT law is right for you, by all means get all your debt records together and declare bankruptcy! You do not need a lawyer to do so, but if $400 to $1,000 paid to a professional will make you feel more secure in your actions, that's money well spent. And there are many community legal-services organizations that can help even if you can't afford to hire a lawyer.
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Destroying Credit Cards. If you feel that credit cards are more trouble than they're worth, that they constitute a needless temptation and endanger your financial health, by all means CHOP THEM UP. What with debit or check cards being widely available nowadays, and the major ones being protected against unauthorized charges, it makes very little or no sense to hold onto credit cards. If you are using a credit card to accumulate frequent-flyer miles, that is a very unwise way to do so if you end up having to pay high interest rates on any balance you have left over at the end of the month. The same goes for "cash back" programs. If you can't pay off your entire credit card bill each month, you will incur interest charges that almost always will more than wipe out any benefit you might reap from a "cash back" or "rewards" program.
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So perhaps it would be best for you to stop using all credit cards: all Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, Diner's Club, and other general purpose credit and charge cards, unless you can and actually do pay off the entire balance at the end of each month, so incur no interest rate. The same holds for store-specific cards, such as Macy's, Sears, The Home Depot, or any other such card, the interest rates for which are often very high.
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Use a debit/check card instead, but make sure that your bank will simply decline a charge if you lose track of your spending, rather than extend credit beyond your available balance and charge you a service fee — that could run you $31 for each and every debit you make beyond your balance! You must keep careful track of your available balance when using a debit card in any case to avoid embarrassment, even if your bank will decline a charge rather than inflict an over-limit fee.
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So destroy all your credit cards to put your finances on a much better footing. But do not tell your credit-card company that you have done so! Because they might accelerate your payments — even demand you pay off the entire balance now — or raise your interest rate, or otherwise treat you badly if they know they can't string you along anymore. And of course pay off your remaining balance as quickly as possible. Destroying your card does not destroy your debt. You can do that only by paying it off, preferably with all due speed — or by declaring bankruptcy.
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And don't give in to the temptation to report the card you chopped up as lost or stolen. Be brave. Cold-turkey your way free from the credit-card habit. It is not so much a convenience as a grave hazard to your financial health.
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If you'd like to make a statement to someone other than your credit-card company that might make a difference in the way people are treated by credit-card companies and government, follow the procedure outlined below. If you're not yet indignant enuf about the credit-card industry to go to the trouble of making a protest, read this article from The New York Times that the PBS documentary series Frontline hilites on its website. If you are now sufficiently angry to try to do something to change all this, follow the procedure below.
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Step 1: cut each of your credit cards into 3 pieces.
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The left piece should show the first four digits of the credit-card number and your first name but NOT your last name.
+
The middle piece should show the middle part of the number and your last name, or most of your last name.
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The right piece should show only the end of the credit-card number and at most a small part of your last name.
+
Step 2: Take out three pieces of paper and three envelopes. On all three pieces of paper, write "The credit-card industry is an enemy of the United States. Destroy usury. Restore bankruptcy." Write nothing more, because the text must be uniform to be most effective.
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Do not sign the first piece of paper, tho you can write your initials after the text.
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Sign the second and third with your full name, and print or type plainly underneath, your full name and home address (not a post office box).
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On the first envelope, write this address:
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President
American Bankers Association
1120 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
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Put the unsigned statement and the left piece of the credit card(s) into this envelope.
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On the second envelope, write this address:
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The Hon. George W. Bush
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500
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Put the right piece of your credit card(s) in this envelope, with no name showing.
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If you trust the banking industry and President to take proper note of your protest, you need not address nor send the third envelope. But if you think the banking industry will not admit that there is widespread, grassroots resentment of the credit-card industry, and that the President is so deep in the pocket of moneyed interests that he or his staff will also pay no heed to your protest and pretend that nobody cares, write this address on the third envelope:
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L. Craig Schoonmaker, Chairman
Expansionist Party of the United States
295 Smith Street
Newark, NJ 07106-2517
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Then put the middle piece of your credit card(s) into that envelope, along with one of the pieces of paper with the statement of indignation and your signature and address.
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Step 3: Seal the two or three envelopes you feel you should send, be sure to affix appropriate postage, and mail them. Also, tell your friends of this protest. You can simply direct them to this blog's URL and date so they can consider for themselves if this is something they want to do too.
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I will collect and number suchever materials as I may receive to prove public discontent. I will assemble the signed pages into a petition to present to Congress, and make the severed bits of plastic available to media as proof of a popular movement to rein in the credit-card industry. If I get no bits of plastic, the credit-card industry will have proven its complete power over society, and this protest will perish. If, however, I get thousands of chunks of credit cards, or tens of thousands, or millions, or tens of millions, media will take note, and government will not be able to pretend that everybody is perfectly content with the way credit card companies treat them and perfectly happy to pay the interest rates Americans are charged.
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If you don't want the credit-card companies to own both you and Congress, cut up your credit cards and send the pieces off as I suggest above. I look forward to hearing from you.*
_____________________

* But please, don't send me a recitation of the harm credit-card companies have done to individuals. I can't take the sadness. I know it's hard for many of us, but tell the President or your Congressman. I cannot yet do anything to help but collate and pass along a petition, and display a collection of middle-thirds of credit cards to media. Let government know of any sadness or desperation that credit cards have caused you. They can do something about it. I can only become depressed, which could markedly impair my ability to help.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,550.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:41 AM

 
Stop Bankruptcy "Reform" (The Debt Slavery Act of 2005)! I have used the term "debt slavery", along with "wage slavery", to describe what the rich are trying to reduce everyone else to, in this country and around the world. So I was pleased to find a website of that name, www.debtslavery.org, devoted to defeating the federal bankruptcy "reform" bill the Republicans are trying to ram thru to make it almost impossible for ordinary people to escape oppressive debt and usury by declaring bankruptcy. I thought the bill had already passed both houses, but am advised that it has not yet passed the House of Representatives. There's still time to agitate for its defeat, and the debt-slavery website affords one quick and easy way to do so.
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To the left at the home page of the www.debtslavery.org website appears a "Write Your Rep" link. If you click on it, you will be taken to an electronic petition/email form by which any American can electronically send a message to his or her own Member of Congress. There is a one-sentence standard petition text and a place for personalized comments (the site recommends personalizing your message to get more attention from your Congressman). This is what I added for the attention of my Congressman, Donald Payne of Newark. He's a Democrat, and so is probably already opposed to this outrageous bill, but I want him to do more than register his one vote against it:

It is urgent that you not only vote against this Debt-Slavery Act but also do everything in your power to influence other people to defeat it. You must also address the underlying problem of usury in this country, by passing a federal usury law that would control all national banks plus credit-card companies doing business across state lines. Thank you for whatever you can do.

There is a place on the form to list email addresses of friends who might like to know of that petition. If you don't want to risk violating their privacy, please send the www.debtslavery.org URL to friends on your own. This is extremely urgent, so please act today.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,548.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:23 PM

 
Prescience or Bust. Inasmuch as in the blog entry below (posted earlier tonite) I predict that Tom DeLay will step down or be forced out as House Majority Leader sometime soon, I might as well put myself out on a limb again and predict who will be elected the next Pope, and, as a further reckless fillip, what name he will take.
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It seems to me that the very best choice would be Argentina's Jorge Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires. His election would do a number of things of great use to the Vatican.
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It would give the Western Hemisphere its first pope. This hemisphere comprises fully half the Catholic world (or a shade more), and 3 of the top 4 most populous Catholic countries on the planet are in the Western Hemisphere.
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Brazil is No. 1, Mexico No. 2,and the U.S. No. 4. (No. 3 is the Philippines, in Asia, another region that has never had a pope. Perhaps the Philippines' Cardinal Sin (no joke; that's really his name: Jaime L. Sin, archbishop of Manila) would be a good choice, if the Church wants to stay within the Old Hemisphere.
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The only European country in the top 5 is Italy, at No. 5. Tho the Catholic population in the U.S. and Italy are relatively stagnant, numbers are increasing by leaps and bounds in Latin America and Africa, but given the large numerical advantage Latin America starts with, comparable rates of growth for the two areas mean that Latin America leaves Africa in the dust.
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Observers suggest that it is not possible that an American (U.S. citizen) could be elected pope, because the U.S. is the planet's sole superpower. Why should that rule out a man as agreeable as Washington's Cardinal McCarrick, who used to be archbishop in my own city, Newark? Who better to balance the secular power of a superpower than a spiritual leader from that very superpower?
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OK. Let's concede that the world's cardinals are most unlikely to elect an American to be pope. What about a Canadian, a proxy-American? Dubious, and partly for the very reason that he might be seen as an American in Canadian clothing.
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Well, what about someone from the world's biggest Catholic country, Brazil? São Paulo's archbishop, Cardinal Claudio Hummes — or Claudio Cardinal Hummes; one sees both formulations nowadays; which is preferred by the cognoscenti? — is prominently mentioned in the press, and seems a good choice. Latin America has worried the Vatican for "liberation theology", and Hummes might be very effective in fighting that Marxist-influenced movement, mainly by being the strident advocate for the poor that he has indeed been.
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But the Italians want the papacy back! They had it for 455 years before that interloping Pole intruded into their unbroken dominance of the Church, and they want to take back what they regard as rightfully theirs.
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So perhaps the best of all possible worlds for the cardinals would be to choose someone from the Western Hemisphere who is of Italian ancestry and old enuf that he will not be expected to last more than 12 years or so.
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We have a winner! The archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, is Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio: a 68-year-old Latin American of Italian ancestry! He actually was born in Italy!
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To elect Bergoglio the next pope would solve all the problems and reconcile all the major competing interests: 'north' vs. 'south', First World vs. Third World, Italians vs. Anybodyelse. Bergogliois also from a large Catholic country (34 million adherents), but only No. 10 on the list. That would avoid resentment among the smaller Catholic countries regarding special treatment for the large Catholic countries.
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So, if one were to regard the upcoming conclave as a (white-)smoke filled room, I would put my money ($1.25) on Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio to be the next pontiff and to be a sensational success. Should I also bet on the name he'll take? One is tempted to think "Pope John Paul III", but I'll bet otherwise. That's two bets, now: (1) that the College of Cardinals will choose an Argentinian of Italian ancestry to be pope, and (2) that the new pope (even if not Bergoglio) will choose a name other than John Paul III. How much more do I feel like pushing my luck?
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Let me guess the name the next pope will choose. There's a serious discussion of this on the Internet at http://www.catholic-pages.com/pope/name.asp and a hilarious discussion at http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=007523. "Peter" is apparently forbidden by tradition. Peter is the "rock" upon which Jesus established his church. There has never been a "Peter II", and any newly elected pope who offered that name would stun the Church.
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Let me add my two cents. How about "Innocent"? Given that the Church has been branded as, essentially, evil for 'co-conspiring' in the priestly sex-abuse scandal in the U.S. and elsewhere (I won't go into my hostility to that crap, some of the "victims" having (gladly) participated in "abuse" for YEARS at a time), "Innocent" might seem a good choice — or would it be more like a plea bargain?
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OK, then, how about "Matthew"? A British betting website offers 16/1 odds against it. How many popes Matthew have there been? None.
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Matthew is the apostle for whom the first book of the New Testament is named. If a new pope wanted to signal a new beginning for the Church of Rome, he could not do better than "Matthew".
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Neither Matthew nor, oddly, Mark nor Luke, has ever been used for the name of a pope. However, "John", the name of the author of the fourth gospel, has been used 23 times, alone, and twice in combination (the last Pope, John Paul II and his predecessor, John Paul I! Isn't that odd!?
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So, I am betting on the old name "Innocent" as my first choice (the last one being Innocent XIII, who died in 1724, almost 300 years ago), and "Matthew" as my second choice (and personal favorite), even tho, or perhaps especially because, there has never been a Pope Matthew.
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My total bet on this, then, to all challengers, is $1.25. That is not $1.25 per bettor, but $1.25 total. I don't believe in predicting the future. I want everyone to accept that the future is unknowable. Still, we always want to prove how smart we are — which, alas, also often points out how smart we aren't.
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No one knows how 117 cardinals will vote, so being wrong won't much embarrass me. Being right, however, would be quite a coup, wouldn't it?
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:24 AM

 
No Delay. I feel I must get this bloglet up right away, because it looks like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will soon lose his job. Or am I too hopeful? If, as I expect, he is forced out even as soon as later today, I want credit for being prescient. I've seen this kind of thing before, with regard to another Texan, Jim Wright, who was ousted as Speaker of the House in 1989; Newt Gingrich, ousted from the same post in 1999; and Trent Lott, ousted as Senate Majority Leader in 2003. The reasons for these various ousters were varied, but none more serious than those that seem to doom DeLay.
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In researching this issue, I came across a mention that Gingrich's Contract with America's "princip[al] goal, a balanced budget, was achieved in 1997". How quaint! A balanced budget. Demanded by Republicans! So adamant were they that a balanced budget was a bedrock principle of conservatism that they wanted to pass a constitutional amendment to require it! But let's see, wasn't 1997 a Clinton year? And wasn't Clinton a Democrat? And didn't the Republican who replaced him turn the largest budget surplus in the history of the world into the largest deficit instead? And what ever happened to the idea of term limits for members of Congress, another key feature of the Contract with America? Maybe somebody should remind the Republicans of their Contract.
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I also discovered, to my horror, that Tom DeLay is my brother's Congressman! No wonder that that sib is thinking of moving out of the Houston area, despite its mild weather, when he retires sometime soon.
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A good summary of the several threads leading to deep trouble for DeLay appears at the MSN Group "Here in Santa Clarita." I won't repeat it here but only say that I will be amazed if a year from now Tom DeLay is still House Majority Leader.
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If urging DeLay's ouster 'aloud' (well, in public print) can hasten the event, let me shout (as block caps are regarded in Internet typographical convention), "DeLAY AWAY, WITH NO DELAY!"
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,547.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:00 AM

 
Six Short Items. Item 1: Saddam the Rebuilder. In an editorial last Thursday, the New York Post complained about the failure of New York to fulfill its promise to rebuild at Ground Zero (the former World Trade Center):

Some 3 1/2 years after the attacks that leveled the World Trade Center, reconstruction work at Ground Zero is virtually at a standstill.* * *

Think about it: Within two years after the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein had rebuilt nearly all the 134 bridges hit in the war, hundreds of miles of roadway and railway track, numerous electrical grids, oil wells and military facilities.

Imagine that! The New York Post is so eager to criticize the mucky-mucks of New York politics that it implicitly praises Saddam by contrast!
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While we're talking about slow progress, let's address the Holland Tunnel (between New Jersey and Lower Manhattan), which has been 'under reconstruction' for at least 13 years! A photo of the Manhattan entrance at one website I checked for how long it took to build the tunnel in the first place aptly shows one lane closed! Initial construction took 7 years. 'Repairs' and reconstruction have taken 13, and completion is nowhere in sight. Almost every day at least one of the total of four lanes (two in each direction) is closed for several hours, and sometimes one lane in each direction is closed, creating horrible delays. Sometimes there is absolutely nothing going on, not one Port Authority vehicle, not one worker in the closed lane. But nobody says a word while thousands upon thousands of motorists lose time from their lives and are subjected to health-hazardous stress. We could have built TWO MORE Holland Tunnels in the time this "reconstruction" has taken.
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Maybe we should hire Saddam to replace the long-gone Robert Moses as the metropolitan area's public-works czar. I hear he's available, his last job having ended some time ago.
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The Post editorial, by the way, says at least two interesting things. First, Saddam was very effective and efficient, and was able to do all this rebuilding while under an international trade embargo. The U.S. occupation force, by contrast, has been unable to rebuild Iraq despite pouring over a hundred billion outside dollars into the country. To this day, almost two years after the war "ended", much of Iraq has no reliable electricity or sewage treatment.
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Second, the U.S. destroyed or damaged "134 bridges, ... hundreds of miles of roadway and railway track, numerous electrical grids, [and] oil wells [as well as] military facilities". Plainly, this was a war against a society, not against a dictator. It was not about "regime change" but about destroying Iraq. And not because it was a danger to the U.S., because a "regime change" would indeed have eliminated any such danger. Rather, any democratically elected government in Iraq will be an enemy of Israel, so it was important to the Wolfowitzes and the other Zionist neocons who control the U.S. Government that Iraq be rendered physically incapable of menacing Israel for the foreseeable future. Iraq had not only to be prevented from endangering the U.S. thru advanced weaponry and intercontinental ballistic missiles but, to protect their beloved Israel, must be permanently disabled even as a regional power.
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Item 2: Lying to Pollsters. The New York Post today reports that a survey of public opinion on the question of whether Americans are ready for a woman President reveals a very different result from what we have been told:

Maybe America isn't ready for a female president after all, according to a surprising poll that found only 49 percent of voters may really want to put a woman in the Oval Office.

Pollsters say that on sensitive issues, voters often give the politically correct answer when asked what they'd do, but are more candid when asked what their friends and neighbors believe.

So pollster Scott Rasmussen first asked Americans if they'd personally be willing to vote for a woman for president and 72 percent said yes — a result comparable to other polls.

But he found a big gap and a very different answer when he asked: "What about your family, friends and co-workers — would most of them be willing to vote for a woman president?" Only 49 percent said yes.

"Asking about your family and friends will give a better gauge. The number of people actually willing to vote for a woman may be closer to 49 percent than 72," Rasmussen said. ["Shock in Prez Survey", April 11]

Well, duh!
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Item 3: Guarding Your Modem. The New York State Legislature has addressed an issue other states have dodged: modem hijacking. AOL reports today:

As you're clicking away at your keyboard, you may be turning your telephone modem over to Internet thieves who make international calls and a profit at your expense.

That's modem hijacking.

New York lawmakers on Monday announced what apparently is a first of its kind measure in the nation to target the practice, which is estimated to run up millions of dollars in illicit phone calls for Americans whose service is stolen through dial-up connections from personal computers.

"They are very creative in doing what they do," said Sen. James Wright, of northern New York's Jefferson County. He said the hijackers can now probably avoid the law because they flash a pop-up window for the computer user to check, authorizing the downloading of modem software that then is remotely accessed to make international calls that are charged back to the unwitting computer user. * * * Advertisers and peddlers of pornography are often behind the activity.

Alas,

The law would allow telephone companies and the state attorney general to bring civil lawsuits against the hijackers and their accomplices.

Why is stealing via modem not a criminal offense? Why isn't government protecting us? If somebody broke into your house thru a glass window, s/he could be arrested and sent to prison. But if s/he breaks in via a Microsoft Window, that's okay?
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Item 4: India and China Get Cozy. AP reports today:

India and China, the world's two most populous countries, agreed Monday to form a strategic partnership to end a border dispute and boost trade in a deal marking a major shift in relations between the Asian giants. * * *

"India and China can together reshape the world order," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at a ceremony for his Chinese counterpart, Premier Wen Jiabao, at India's presidential palace.

Why don't they focus on more realistic goals, like ending STARVATION in their two dirt-poor countries and bringing the bulk of their people into the 21st Century?
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One interesting sidelite of that article is this nugget:

India and China agreed to boost bilateral trade to $20 billion by 2008. Last year, trade totaled $13.6 billion, with India recording a $1.75 billion trade surplus, according to India's trade ministry.

Hmm. Last year, the U.S. had a $162 billion deficit with China! But India has a surplus. Well, they're both poor countries, and the amount of trade is tiny. But China also has a trade deficit with Japan, a rich country with a very high standard of living. That's part of the resentment that produced "student" demonstrations in Communist China over the past several days (no demonstration occurs in Communist China without government instigation or at least government sanction). Why does Japan run a surplus with China but the U.S. runs an enormous deficit?
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Item 5: Spring Snows. The Denver area and parts of several other states had a huge snowfall yesterday, totaling two feet in some places, well into spring. But that hasn't stopped the endless drumbeat of propaganda about the imminent "dangers" of "global warming". If New York City had six feet of snow in August, the media would still be ranting about "global warming" even as they were trapped within snowed-in offices and studios, because this is an item of almost religious faith, and no evidence to the contrary persuades the true believer.
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Item 6: Beware Cellphone Telemarketing. Finally, let me give you some news you can use. A friend forwarded this warning to me today. Take its advice and use the number given to protect yourself. You must either call from the phone you want to block or go online at http://www.ftc.gov/donotcall/ to add a number to the list.

In a few weeks, cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing
companies and you will start to receive sale calls. You will be charged [minutes] for these calls.

Call this number from your cell phone 888-382-1222.

It is the national DO NOT CALL list. It only takes a minute of your time. It blocks your number for 5 years. Please pass this on to everyone you know who
doesn't want to be hassled.

(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,547.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:30 PM

 
Item 1 (of 2): The "Right" vs. The "Good". On today's CNN "Capital Gang", a segment discussed panelist Robert Novak's conversion from Judaism to Catholicism. I had been unclear about Novak's religious affiliation because, tho many Novaks are Jewish, many others are Catholic, since it is a common Polish name, and Poland was both an early center for Ashkenazi Jewry and an intensely Catholic country. We have been reminded of Poland's Catholic piety many times in the coverage of the death of the Polish pope, John Paul II.
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I checked the origin of the name, which I understood to have different forms, chief among them in the United States "Novak" and "Nowak". About.com has this explanation:

Definition: New guy in town, from the root now, meaning new. The Nowak surname was occasionally bestowed on one who converted to Christianity (a new man). The Nowak surname is among the most common in Poland and is also very common in other Slavic countries, especially the Czech Republic (where it is spelled NOVAK).

So Robert Novak is very appropriately named.*
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One of the other "Capital Gang" panelists, Al Hunt, recalled that the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Senator from New York and a stalwart of the progressive movement, affectionately ribbed Novak with something like, 'So now you're a Catholic. When are you going to become a Christian?' Novak responded to Hunt's anecdote "To be a good person, you don't have to be a liberal."
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Yes, I'm afraid you do.
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Oh, conservatism may once have allowed of goodness, but today, "compassionate conservatism" is a contradiction in terms. Today's conservatism is harsh, heartless, callous radical libertarianism whose motto could be "I've got mine. I don't care about you."
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It has always irritated liberals that conservatives and libertarians get to call themselves the "Right", which subliminally suggests that anyone else is "Wrong", because that's all that's "Left". Maybe we should start calling ourselves the "Good", for wanting the best for everyone, and let the selfish continue to call themselves the "Right". Among which would you rather be numbered? The Right, or The Good?
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Item 2: Reasons to Convert. Robert Novak was long one of the few nationally known Jews to be critical of Israel. In an interview at St. Francis University, he was asked about this:

[Q] During your commencement address, you mentioned your conversion from Judaism to Catholicism. It struck me interesting that you were born Jewish but have been such an outspoken critic of Israel’s position on the Palestinian situation. How did you come to your position of this particular problem?

[A] Well, I haven’t been an observant Jew since I was thirteen years old. I think there are a lot of Jews who think like me. Other people often ask me why I am anti-Israel. I’m not; I just think we need to have a more balanced approach to this situation.

He amplified that a bit:

[Q] I would also like you to address the Israeli-Palestinian situation.

[A] Well, I think that we have made a terrible mistake. We can’t be a mediator and then move over here and back Sharon’s plan. I have a lot of Palestinian friends who have been devastated by our shift away from mediation. I think that we need to restore the balance. Kerry is as bad as Bush on this.

Quite so. You can't be an "honest broker" if even before the negotiations have begun, you take one side against the other. And the United States, under both major parties, has always taken Israel's side. Even when a U.S. Administration criticizes in words, it keeps shipping boatloads of cash to support the very behavior it pretends to disapprove. No one is fooled.
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Today there was another multiple murder of Palestinians by Israel:

Ali Abu Zeid, a 22-year-old Rafah resident, said a group of boys were playing soccer in an open area in the Rafah camp when the ball was kicked toward the border fence. "The kids ran after it, and that's when we heard gunfire," he said.

Palestinian hospital officials said the two of the dead youths were 15 years old and the third was 14.

The Israeli army said a group of youths had entered an unauthorized area near the border and ignored warning shots to stop. The shots were fired by forces patrolling the area in an armed vehicle, the army said.

When was the last time you heard of American police shooting kids for chasing after a ball? It is this kind of thing done over and over and over without end that has driven all decent people away from Zionism.
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Perhaps Robert Novak did not consciously leave Judaism because of Zionism, but was drawn to Catholicism for simply spiritual reasons. But many American Jews are abandoning Judaism and the compelled allegiance to Israel it seems to entail.
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An organization called "Jews for Judaism" was established to fight massive conversions to Christianity, especially among Americans. Their website says:

Missionaries convince their recruits that they are not complete as Jews until they accept Jesus as the Messiah, and that a Jew retains his or her Jewish identity after converting to Christianity. According to a 1990 Council of Jewish Federations population study, over 600,000 Jews in North America alone identify with some type of Christianity. Over the past 25 years, more than 275,000 Jews worldwide have been converted specifically by missionaries who use deceptive tactics that masquerade Christian beliefs in the guise of Judaism.* * *

Contrary to popular perception, it is not only emotionally unstable Jews [say what?!] who fall prey to the missionaries' efforts; in fact, all Jews are susceptible. Missionaries often target college campuses, hospitals, drug rehabilitation programs, seniors' residences, and shopping malls in Jewish neighborhoods, as well as the Israeli community, Soviet immigrants and intermarried couples. They deliberately misquote, mistranslate and misinterpret Jewish scriptures and rabbinical texts in an attempt to "prove" that Jesus was both the Jewish Messiah and G-d. Their delegitimization of Judaism, in concert with their misleading exploitation of Jewish symbols, religious artifacts and even traditional music, serve to confuse the potential convert, making him or her more vulnerable.

These missionary groups -- over 900 in North America alone -- are active worldwide, and can be found in almost every Jewish population center. Several governing bodies in this movement have considerable political clout; one has even been granted "observer" status at the United Nations. Several groups have founded "Messianic Jewish" day schools for children and "yeshivot" where they produce ordained "Messianic rabbis." There are over 100 "Messianic congregations" in Israel, and over 38 in the former Soviet Union. These groups prey almost exclusively upon uneducated, unaffiliated and alienated Jews.

In response to this ever-growing threat, Jews for Judaism International was established in 1986. The only worldwide counter-missionary resource and outreach network, Jews for Judaism has branches in Los Angeles; New York; Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; Toronto; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Melbourne, Australia. Its two primary goals are preventive education and winning back those Jews who have been influenced by missionaries. * * *

How successful is Jews for Judaism? There is a 60 to 70% chance that any Jewish person who is considering converting to Christianity, or already has converted, will return to Judaism if they are willing to listen to the Jewish point of view. Most of these individuals leave our counseling with a renewed and vital appreciation of their Jewish heritage.

Still, there's only a 60-70% chance of winning back Jews who have left Judaism. If Israel would stop shooting children, there might not be so many Jews who want to escape Judaism.
____________________

* Another website, confirming the "newcomer" etymology without mentioning conversion equates it with English "Newman", which is also a common Jewish name, tho the German equivalent/predecessor "Neumann" is also a common Catholic name, including the name of a saint from Philadelphia. Another website mentions an alternative origin for the name: "was also used to identify a shoemaker who made new shoes, as distinct from a cobbler who repaired old ones", even tho it also says the name derives from "a nickname, that is to say, it is derived from a nickname that was attributed in the intitial bearer. In this instance, the surname finds its roots in the word "nowy" which literally means "new". Thus, the surname Novak originated as a nickname for a newcomer to a place."
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,546.).)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:18 PM

 
Rebuild the Twin Towers? Never! The New York Post, ever the champion of regression, wants to rebuild the old World Trade Center pretty much as it was. Perhaps the Post's staff is too young to remember how hated the Towers were when they first went up. I, however, remember how long it took for New Yorkers and New Jerseyans, who had to see them, to get used to them. And we never did get used to the empty, useless plaza, one of the most dreary public spaces on Earth. Have the people thumping for rebuilding the Twin Towers forgotten the indignation of urbanologists at the interruption of the grid occasioned by the creation of a superblock? Have they forgotten how utterly empty and sterile the plaza was? I haven't.
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It is human nature to imprint on what we are born to. That's why the great preponderance of all people, even in the modern age, when travel is relatively easy (tho "travel" derives from "travail") live their entire lives close to where they were born or, if they travel afar, often return, like salmon, to the place of their birth.
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Like the smells or topographical contours of the rivers and streams, or magnetic field, or whatever it is that draws salmon back thousands of miles from where they spend their adult lives, the images of our youth draw us back, and we remember fondly things that shouldn't be remembered fondly at all. Our memories of a time when all things were new, seen with new eyes; when we were young and strong and secure in the love of our family and friends — and friends were so easy to make in the institutional settings of family, neighborhood, and school — can imbue the place of our birth with qualities it never really had in itself. We added to them the exuberance of the child. The sun always shines on them and imparts a warm, rosy glow.
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But the World Trade Center deserves no such rosy feeling. They were atrocious architecture that should never have been built, and we should be glad they're gone.
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I was raised at a time when boxes of all shapes and sizes were being put up, and praised in the name of "modern architecture" — tall boxes, short boxes, fat boxes, slim boxes; streamlined, uniform in detail, with windows and panels that were supposed, somehow, to hypnotize us thru sheer repetitiveness all across the visual field, into thinking we were in a terrific, new, and efficient age. Gone were the old vanities of towers and spires, rococo tracery and columns that held up nothing. This was "new, improved" architecture, functional, efficient, uncluttered. And boring. Mind-numbingly boring.
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I tried to like it, because I was young and this was new, and young people are supposed to like the new. But I didn't. The World Trade Center was going to be the two tallest buildings on Earth, and that was exciting. But they were stunningly boring. 220 floors (between the two towers) of repetitive stainless steel ribs and holes. Why?
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I saw them in all kinds of liting conditions and times of day, from New Jersey, from the Village, from Midtown, from Brooklyn and Queens. Still nothing.
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I worked in them on temp assignments, passed thru the bustling underground shopping plaza, and visited the indoor and outdoor observation decks. The view from the rooftop deck was stunning, and I was glad to take out-of-town visitors to share that experience. (I then lived in New York, but have returned to New Jersey after 35 years in Manhattan. Color me salmon.) But the view out never justified the view of.
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I feared we would be stuck with this modernist mistake for a hundred years, and it would get better only as we adjusted to it and its mass was added to and refined by the addition of finer structures all around its base. But New York got a break, a chance to redo its skyline twice in 35 years. Hallelujah!
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Usama Bin Laden did us all a great favor in demolishing that clunky complex and giving New York the chance to renew itself and correct a terrible error: urban renewal a la phoenix, wherein a new skyline can rise from the ashes of the old. Indeed, a website that proposes restoration of the Twin Towers uses the term "World Trade Center Phoenix".
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So I sent the following letter to the editor of the Post:

I HATED the World Trade Center and was delited that New York had a chance within my lifetime to undo a terrible mistake. The Twin Towers were best looked out from, not at. The rooftop observation deck was a wondrous spatial experience, looking down and away. But if you had to see the boxy, clunky, dumpy towers from afar, you wished they weren't there. Now they're not. Thank God. Let's build something beautiful and post-"modern", something with form and grace, not a mindless repetition of the moronic empty boxes of old.

(Responsive to "Rebuild the Towers", column by Nicole Gelinas, New York Post, April 7, 2005)
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,544.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:49 PM

 
Conversation on Terrorism. My colleague in northern England on Wednesday recommended a longish online article (c. 1,400 words) on Usama Bin Laden's worldview, published last November, titled "Terrorist Strategy 101: a quiz", then asked:

By the way, if there is another al-Qaeda attack on the United States, what would you suspect the most likely target to be? Blue state or red state? Military, economic or population target?

I read the recommended article and sent him the following reply. Don't worry that I might be giving Al-Qaeda ideas. I'm sure that their febrile brains have thought about the possible actions I mention.

I don't agree with some of the points made in that analysis, but it is a point of view worth considering. [In brief, the major thesis is that Islamists want to reconstruct the Caliphate,* an earthly kingdom of Islam to unite politically all Moslem countries, but that the U.S. stands in the way. So the U.S. will to interfere (and/or its ability to offer Moslems a different aspiration, a good secular life) must be broken. To do that, Islamists must get the U.S. to overextend itself in multiple invasions of the Moslem world, as to provoke worldwide Moslem revulsion at everything American and secular, and bankrupt the United States economically, as will force it to remove itself from the Moslem world as mujahedeen actions in Afghanistan contributed to the destruction of the Soviet Union.]
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The problem for Islamists vis-a-vis the United States is that the U.S. is a real superpower, with a depth of wealth, technology, and power of many kinds that the Soviet Union, a paper superpower, did not even begin to approach, much less equal. Moreover, money is nothing to the U.S., and unless the Islamists can do better than a few piddling American deaths a day, the U.S. can sustain a war forever, the "permanent war" of Wolfowitz & Co. Worse, for Islamists: the U.S. is developing unmanned aircraft and robot warriors that can kill and otherwise cause devastation abroad without endangering any U.S. life.
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Hoping to exhaust the U.S. economy is sadly uncomprehending. The wealthy of the U.S. are just SO wealthy and the economy is just so huge, that a trivial and painless increase in taxes on the rich would raise hundreds of billions of dollars a year for perpetual war, in addition to the hundreds of billions already spent, which have not even been perceived by Americans.
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As for provoking the U.S. into vicious overreaction, the problem for Islamists is that the U.S. is not even nearly as extreme as Israel, not as forthright in regarding Moslems as subhuman scum to be slaughtered in huge numbers until their will to resist is broken. U.S. neocons have had to pretend to care about "the people" of Afghanistan and Iraq, because the people of the United States do not want to see themselves as mass murderers and bigots — even tho the behavior of their Government produces results little different from what they'd be if killing Moslems rather than helping them were the explicit purpose of their acts. The Iraq invasion and continued occupation have to be presented to Americans as necessary to HELP the people of Iraq, to "liberate" them and "protect" them. And the more Americans there are on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, interacting with ordinary (Moslem) people, especially kids, the more human connection there comes to be, so that when they return to the U.S., American soldiers become a built-in pro-Moslem constituency that not only has been scarred by the terrible things they have had to do but also has come to identify with and sympathize with the aspirations of the people they met over there.
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In short, it doesn't look good for the Islamist cause if that rests on creating the United States into a super Israel. And now that both Iraq and Afghanistan have had elections that international observers have reported to be pretty free and fair, the UN, Arab League, EU, and other entities — e.g., the World Bank (under its new president, Paul Wolfowitz!) — are planning to put money and personnel in, as will reduce the drain on the U.S. Bankrupting the U.S. is becoming daily less feasible, and it never was the slightest feasible anyway.
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I also don't understand the assertion that the U.S. military is stretched thin by the existing Iraq and Afghanistan actions. According to Department of Defense data there are 1.4 million active-duty personnel in the U.S. military. How is 150,000 (or, now, less) in Iraq and 18,000 in Afghanistan straining our resources?
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As for an attack on a megachurch, that would be a good choice, from Bin Laden's point of view. There are a bunch in TEXAS, which would be especially appealing psychologically, for taunting Bush by attacking his own state. Texas also is constantly infiltrated by illegal migrants from Mexico, so if terrorists can get into Mexico, they should be able to move on to Texas with minimal difficulty.
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The problem with a targeted attack that focuses on anti-Moslem bigots in rightwing churches, however, is that Americans would not be as unified in demanding a retaliatory war. The unity and patriotism/jingoism the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks — but mainly the WTC attack — produced, resulted from the feeling that simple working people, just doing their job, were killed by the hundreds and hundreds. 'It could happen to any of us!'
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But if an outspokenly anti-Moslem megachurch were attacked, a lot of Americans would feel that there's a certain justice to it: you denounce Moslems, that's "fiting words", and bigotry gives rise to bigotry, attack gives rise to counterattack, tit-for-tat. Tribalism would almost certainly still prevail, but not with the kind of vengefulness Al-Qaeda wants. The response would be too nuanced, too narrowly targeted on terrorist organizations, training camps, etc., not on innocent Moslem civilians, to produce white rage in the Moslem world. And many voices of moderation in the U.S. would say "See what you get when you practice religious intolerance? Let's not make the same mistake. This is why Jesus told us to turn the other cheek, to void violence by not inciting more. As Gandhi said, 'An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.'" That wouldn't play into Al-Qaeda's hands at all!
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It is, of course, hard to know what thought processes are going on within Al-Qaeda and other groups. There is so much suspicion of Arabs now that using other groups might be more productive. Abu Sayyaf comes to mind: Filipinos are a large Asian minority, most of them perceived as Christian. It might be easy to sneak extremist Filipinos into the U.S. Indonesia has gotten a lot of sympathetic media play of late, with the tsunami and earthquake. Black Africans from Moslem North Africa could glide in under the radar.
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It's hard to understand, actually, why there's been so relatively LITTLE terrorism in the United States. Europe has had far more, from Bader Meinhof to the Madrid train bombing, ETA in Spain, Croatian nationalists in the Netherlands, bombings across France, etc.
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Plainly, the lowest pain for huge gain would be to assassinate Dubya. That would make Cheney President(!) and produce the total triumph of neocon extremists, in addition to its symbolic warning that no one is safe from Al-Qaeda. A single assassin or tiny group can kill almost anyone, if s/he is willing to die in the attack. Mahatma Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi (killed by a woman suicide bomber, whom our culture would not suspect), Kennedy, Lincoln, the Archduke Ferdinand, and on, and on, prove the case. But for some reason, terrorist organizations don't always choose the most obvious targets, for instance, Sharon for the Palestinians, Britain's PM for the IRA. With today's technology, high rises, high-powered rifles and missiles, no security detail is large enuf. Sooner or later, somewhere, a crevice opens wide enuf to let a bullet, bomb, or missile thru. I repeat a point I made in my blog months ago: the human race is slime.
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We will go on and on killing each other until and unless someone can find and distribute all across the Earth a genetic lobotomy to remove violence from our essence.

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* A brief description of the Caliphate at its height appears at the Expansionist Party's Iraq page (which was intended to suggest to Saddam's government before the first Gulf War the kinds of points it needed to make to the American people).
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,544.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:08 AM